R and J in the USA

In Minneapolis, we finally made it to the ballpark! It was the Twins versus the Jays. Julie was in a bit of a bind. She wanted to root for the home team of wherever we were, but the Jays had been her childhood team. Way back in the day, Julie had been super into baseball and all in for the Jays, baseball card collections and all. She decided to quietly root for the Jays but make sure to cheer for the Twins just the same. Regardless, we were just pumped to be in the crowd on the pilgrimage to the stadium. 

There is just nothing like the experience of marching towards a stadium for an epic showdown alongside thousands of pumped fans and, while we love all sports, for Julie, the American romance with baseball still pulses somewhere deep in her veins. Though she hasn’t dedicated much time to it since her early days, there is just something in there from the first time she played catch with her dad that will never go away. So, walking into the stadium just lit up the world. The people. The food. The scoreboards and cheers. The surround sound of the crowds reaching up to the sky and peering down on that brown diamond amidst the green. Yeah. That baseball romance was still alive and well.

The Jays had clobbered the Twins the day before. The Jays got a home run at the top of the first inning and then the next six innings went by without a single run. The Twins put one run on the board in the 7^th, bringing the game to a tie. The Jays answered with two more in the top of the 8th, bringing the score to 3-1 for the Jays.  At that point, after the clobbering of the prior day and not too much action throughout the game, it looked like this one would be for the birds. But the Twins weren’t ready to give up another game on home turf. At the bottom of the 8th, thanks to a solid hit and a few fielding errors from the Jays, the Twins had two men on base. Then Royce Lewis came up to bat and hit a big one out to left field with two outs on the board. We all watched as it soared through the air. The outfielder kept going further and further back to catch it, and BOOM. It landed in the flower beds on the other side of the wall. Home run for the Twins with two men on base to bring score to 4-3! The scoreboard shot up with fireworks and the crowd erupted! 

It was super fun to have the Twins doing great while we were in Minnesota. Fans were going wild, and we were too (even though Julie’s historic loyalty to the Jays felt the slight burn). It was awesome. At the top of the 9th, the Twins had no problem shutting down the Jays and that was it. Game over. Twins win.  

At one point a foul ball shot up into the 3rd level on the 1^st base side, below and to the left of where we were sitting. A guy in the first row caught the ball and immediately hand it to his four-year-old son, which was adorable. The little boy, being a little boy and just wanting to be part of the fun, immediately threw the ball back over the edge down to the people below! Everyone in a two-section radius was laughing. Everyone but the dad, that is, who stood with his hands on his head in disbelief. The little boy clearly didn’t get what the problem was. We’re playing catch, aren’t we? I did good right? The father threw his hands up in the air in dismay and head-shaking laughter! It was hilarious. “Oh, well,” I’m sure he was thinking. “So much for having a game ball for me and my boy to enjoy for decades to come.” The funnier and even sweeter part, however, was about a minute later, when the next batter hit a foul ball to the exact same spot. This time the grandfather caught it. And he held on to it, with the full support of the cheering crowd.